The largest lender of the country, State Bank of India has tied up with telecom major Bharti Airtel in a move to spread banking facilities to the unbanked and underbanked areas of the country.

A new entity is to emerge out of the joint venture (JV) with an investment of Rs 100 crore. It will act as a business correspondent (BC) in the process. Airtel retailers will be set up as customer service points (CSPs) in the country.

SBI will have 51% stake in the new entity and the remaining will lie with Bharti Airtel.

"This joint venture will bring together the commitment of the two institutions, which will enable the bank reaching out to every Indian leveraging the distribution network of Airtel to provide banking services,'' SBI Chairman O. P. Bhatt said.

"This historic collaboration between SBI and Airtel will create scalable operations that will address the banking requirements of millions of Indians through the mobile platform,'' Bharti Airtel Chairman and Managing Director Sunil Bharti Mittal said.

A win-win situation for everybody! Airtel, SBI, but most of all India. Given that 80% of rural India is unbanked due to the high set up costs of banks with respect to the returns one can expect from such regions, this progressive measure comes as a much needed relief.